Like many of my compatriots, I enjoyed the recent news story concerning an English councillor named David Silvester, and his somewhat strident views on recent meteorological activity, and the resultant flooding that plagued much of England late last year. For the benefit of those unfamiliar with this savoury slice of local Brit politics, the essence and background to the story are as follows… (Apologies, incidentally, to those already familiar with the episode – feel free to skip the next few paragraphs – but some of the details are just too toothsome to resist repetition.)

David Silvester, the hero of our story, used to be a member of the Conservative Party, until he defected to Ukip in 2013 outraged by a decision by Britain’s Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to propose a law legalising gay marriage. Ukip are newcomers to the Brit political scene, founded as a single-issue party dedicated to opposing Britain’s membership of the European Union. However recent successes encouraged them to consider trying to challenge the Conservatives as the UK’s foremost centre-right party.

The Conservative leader David Cameron memorably dismissed Ukip as mostly composed of ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’. An opinion a communication he received from a former fellow Conservative, David Silvester, might have appeared to support. According to David Silvester himself, prior to his defection to Ukip, he warned the Prime Minister that legalising gay marriage would lead to ‘disasters’. But all to no avail. Hence, observed Silvester, the British PM having sown the wind with his impious bill, come the winter of 2013 the whole UK was reaping the whirlwind.

‘Since the passage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act, the nation has been beset by serious storms and floods’, the councillor explained in a letter to his local paper, the Henley Standard. ‘One recent one caused the worst flooding for 60 years. The Christmas floods were the worst in 127 years. Is this just “global warming” or is there something more serious at work? The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war.’

In the face of his dire warnings of the consequences of passing such unholy legislation, continued our pious councillor, the Prime Minister ‘went ahead despite a 600,000-signature petition by concerned Christians and more than half of his own parliamentary party saying that he should not do so. Now, even as Cameron sheds crocodile tears on behalf of destitute flooded homeowners, playing at advocate against the very local councils he has made cash-strapped, it is his fault that large swathes of the nation have been afflicted by storms and floods.

‘He has arrogantly acted against the Gospel that once made Britain “great” and the lesson surely to be learned is that no man or men, however powerful, can mess with Almighty God with impunity and get away with it for everything a nation does is weighed on the scales of divine approval or disapproval’, our Mr Silvester concluded with appropriate Biblical solemnity. Only that wasn’t an end to it. Far from it. The Ukip councillor’s letter to his local paper quickly went national, as the party’s many opponents swooped upon it, Conservatives and leftwingers alike seizing upon the eccentric declaration with glee as evidence that Ukip was a nest of nasty extremists.

Silvester was warned by his Ukip bosses to keep his head low, but he wouldn’t be silenced. After conducting a radio interview in which he described homosexuality as a ‘spiritual disease’ that could be cured, Silvester was summarily drummed out of the party. For many commentators outside of Ukip central office, the episode was one to be smugly savoured even celebrated. Silvester’s views were so absurdly medieval that it offered a golden opportunity to preach piously against the evils of homophobia, all and sundry feeling safe that they’d look broadminded, modern and compassionate by comparison. I would, however, add a caveat here. For Mr Silvester is to be commended on one thing – unlike the vast majority of his colleagues in politics – at least he stands up for what he believes in. And what he believes in happens to be the Bible.

While suggesting that tolerance towards homosexuality can lead to violent divine retribution may sound a bit crazy – Hell it almost certainly is – it’s exactly the kind of thing you’ll find in the Bible. The fate of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis is well known. While some a few theologians have quibbled over exactly what sins these cities tolerated among their denizens which provoked the wrath of God, tradition makes it pretty clear. While ‘sodomy laws’ (a term derived of course from Sodom) can theoretically cover a range of ‘unnatural acts’, in practice such legislation is almost exclusively targeted at homosexuals, known in vulgar parlance as ‘sodomites’. Compared to Sodom and Gomorrah, obliterated in a rain of sulphur, you might argue that the UK got off lightly with a few soggy Xmas presents and some overwatered Christmas trees.

Because, make no mistake, punishing people with lethal natural (and unnatural) disasters is very much Jehovah’s M.O. in the Bible. The sacred text is stuffed to capacity with examples of God cutting loose on his creation to devastating effect. Author Steve Wells has even attempted to calculate his death total, publishing the results of his research in the book Drunk with Blood. Jehovah accounts for some 25 million (substantially more than his rival Satan, whose batting average is a miserable ten – just ten, not ten million – and most of those with God as his accomplice). Most famously, of course, God drowned the whole world, save Noah and his family, underlining His readiness to use torrential rain to make his displeasure plain.

Even if we accept the theological hair-splitters who say that the punishment meted out to Sodom and Gomorrah was a consequence, not of holy homophobia but divine wrath aimed at rape or maybe bad hospitality, there can be little denying the anti-gay agenda in the Bible. Leviticus doesn’t mince words in describing it as ‘an abomination’, and those responsible ‘shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them’. In other words, to return to our beleaguered Ukip councillor for a second, making his odd meteorological observations he’s simply following good Christian logic: God opposes homosexuality, and expressed his disapproval with natural disasters. David Silvester might be talking bigoted garbage, but it’s good Christian bigoted garbage.

The next line of defence in this argument that Christianity isn’t inherently homophobic, savage and somewhat insane, is to insist that we should focus on the New Testament, and that Jesus never expressed any antipathy to homosexuals. Only that won’t wash either. For one thing, to discount the Old Testament is to render JC meaningless – if he’s not the Son of God, then he’s just an obscure 1st Century rabbi of dubious mental stability. And who might dad be? It’s clearly Jehovah of the Old Testament – Jesus even makes admiring references to his old man’s obliteration of Sodom and Gomorrah in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Why would Christ feel the need to make his feelings on homosexuality known when they are already so plainly laid out in established Judaic law? (‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil’: Matthew.) Back to the issue we began with – gay marriage – while JC had nothing to say on homosexuality, he had plenty to say on the subject of marriage…

‘They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage,’ explained Christ according to the Gospel of Luke. In other words, gay or not, you’re not getting into Heaven if you’ve got a ring on your finger. Seem a little extreme? How about family values Jesus style? ‘If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.’ (Luke) Or, if you want to make doubly sure of your place in Heaven, why not cut your balls off? ‘There are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.’ (Matthew)

So, when we get down to it, the main problem with what David Silvester said was that it was a bit on the wishy washy side. If anything, he was being a bit of a piker by suggesting that God might respond to news of a proposal to sanctify gay marriage with a mere spate of localised flooding. It goes without saying that I don’t respect or agree with David Silvester or his views on homosexuality. But before you’re too quick to dismiss him and have a good laugh, maybe pause to wonder what you should be dismissing and laughing at? All the evidence is that he’s a man of sincere faith upholding what he believes to be right. Perhaps it’s time to start challenging and mocking faith and religion, rather than taking the easy option and joining the fashionable tendency to pillory obvious scapegoats as lunatics while conveniently ignoring the source of the lunacy…

To Be Continued…